In this section descriptions of some important standards organizations are presented. We have used the typology of standards organizations adopted by the Diffuse project (see below). According to this typology there are formal, consortium and other standard-related organizations. The formal and consortium organizations are standardization bodies, which develop or/and approve standard specifications. They have a regulatory character - usually standards adopted by them should be implemented in the countries which are members of such organizations. Formal standardization bodies can consist of governmental or private organizations. The consortium type standardization bodies consists of industrial organizations and produce the de-facto standards. These standards can be further adopted, modified, and approved by formal standardization bodies on national and international levels.
In the category "other" we consider initiatives and organizations which monitor, harmonize, maintain, or facilitate the application of already adopted standards.
5.1 Formal Standardisation Bodies
5.1.1 ISO - International Standards Organisation
URL: http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/ISOOnline.frontpage
ISO is a non-governmental organisation established in 1947. It is a worldwide federation of about 140 national standards bodies. Its mission is to promote the development of standardization and related activities in the world with a view to facilitating the international exchange of goods and services, and to developing cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity.
ISO's work results in international agreements that are published as International Standards. The scope of ISO is not limited to any particular industry; it covers all areas of standardization except electrical and lectronic engineering which is responsibility of IEC.
The technical work of ISO is highly decentralized, carried out in a hierarchy of some 2 850 technical committees, subcommittees and working groups. In these committees, qualified representatives of industry, research institutes, government authorities, consumer bodies, and international organizations from all over the world come together as equal partners in the resolution of global standardization problems. Although the greater part of the ISO technical work is done by correspondence, there are, on average, a dozen ISO meetings taking place somewhere in the world every working day of the year.
Some 30 000 experts participate in meetings each year.
There are three main phases in the ISO standards development process.
1. Defining the scope of a standard. The need for a standard is usually expressed by an industry sector, which communicates this need to a national member body. The latter proposes the new work item to ISO as a whole. Once the need for an International Standard has been recognized and formally agreed, the first phase involves definition of the technical scope of the future standard. This phase is usually carried out in working groups which comprise technical experts from countries interested in the subject matter.
2. Detailed specification. In this phase countries negotiate the detailed specifications within the standard.
3. Formal approaval: this is the final phase in which the draft specification is formally approved by voting follwoig previosly established voting scheme. The approved draft is published as an ISO International Standard.
Some of the ISO Technical Committees which are of interest to the OntoWeb SIG on Content Standards are the follwoing.
• TC46 (Information and documentation) standardizes practices relating to libraries, documentation and information centers, indexing and abstracting services, archives, information science and publishing. It is coordinated by AFNOR, the French National Standardization Body.
• TC 154 (Processes, data elements and documents in commerce, industry and administration) is coordinated by SNV, the Swiss Association for Standardization. Its activities relate to international standardization and registration of business and administration processes, supporting data used for information interchange between and within individual organizations, and supporting standardization activities in the field of industrial data.
• TC 184 (Industrial automation systems and integration) is coordinated by AFNOR. Its scop[e is standardization in the field of industrial automation and integration concerning discrete part manufacturing and encompassing the application of multiple technologies, i.e. information systems, machines and equipment, and telecommunications.
• TC 213 (Dimensional and Geometrical Product Specifications).
• TC 215 (Health informatics) is coordinated by ANSI, the American National Standards Institute.
Standardization in the field of information for health, and Health Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to achieve compatibility and interoperability between independent systems.
Also, to ensure compatibility of data for comparative statistical purposes (e.g. classifications), and to reduce duplication of effort and redundancies.
5.1.2 CEN - European Committee for Standardisation
URL: http://www.cenorm.be
CEN is an international association set up to manage cooperation between European National Standards Bodies (NSBs). The objective of CEN is to produce (create or adopt) standards that are relevant throughout Europe.
The Standards Program is controlled by the Technical Board of CEN. The standardization activities of CEN are done as part of ISO standardization, adopting existing ISO standards or are organized in Technical Committees which often base their work on existing ISO standards. The Technical Board coordinates the following technical bodies:
• CEN Technical Committees are responsible for the planning and the management of the standards making process.
• CEN Workshops are new open environments for producing specifications on a consensus basis, as CEN Workshop Agreements, pre-Standards, guidance or other material. The aim of the CEN Workshops is bridging the gap between industrial consortia that produce de facto standards, and the formal European standardization process which produces standards through consensus under the authority of the CEN member bodies.
1. Associated standards bodies. When CEN feels it appropriate that in specific fields the preparatory work can be done by an existing organization, it can decide to work in collaboration with Associated Standards Bodies.
1. Other organizations. CEN also has agreements with a number of organizations which either prepare specifications which are then processed through CEN as European Standards or with whom it works in tight cooperation.
CEN has established the Information Society Standardization System (ISSS) as a single unit for CEN activities in the ICT field. CEN/ISSS has established a wide range of workshops, including the ones on Electronic Commerce (EC) and e-Business Board for European Standardization (eBES). The current activities of EC workshop make it be of a special interest for the Ontoweb SIG on Content Standards.
5.1.2.1 CEN/ISSS Electronic Commerce Workshop
CEN/ISSS Electronic Commerce Workshop offers a coherent and cohesive focus for EC standardization at a European level, within the context of global EC standardization activities. The basic scope of the EC Workshop's technical projects is the core elements of Electronic Commerce, together with strategy/awareness activities which promote and complement the technical work.
Collaborative and liaison activities are very important in this all-encompassing field to ensure that no duplication of work, which might waste resources, occurs. The Workshop takes into consideration relevant work in other organizations, and maintains appropriate liaison with a range of CEN/ISSS Workshops, as well as with other external activities.
A particularly interesting CEN/ISSS EC Project is MULECO - Multilingual Upper-Level Electronic Commerce Ontology. It has been approved on the last meeting of the Workshop (in October 2001).
5.2 Industrial and Public Consortiums
5.2.1 World Wide Web Consortium
URL: http://www.w3c.org
Sources: information on http://www.diffuse.org
The W3C was founded to develop common protocols for the evolution of the World Wide Web. It is an international industry consortium, jointly hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science [MIT/LCS] in the United States, the French Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique [INRIA] in Europe, and the Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus in Asia. Currently it has more than 500 member organizations.
W3C provides a vendor-neutral forum for its Members to address Web-related issues. Working together with its staff and the global Web community, the Consortium aims to produce free, interoperable specifications and sample code. Funding from membership dues, public research funds, and external contracts underwrite these efforts. W3C's long term goals for the Web are:
2. Universal Access: To make the Web accessible to all by promoting technologies that take into account the vast differences in culture, education, ability, material resources and physical limitations of users on all continents;
3. Semantic Web: To develop a software environment that permits each user to make the best use of the resources available on the Web;
4. Web of Trust: To guide the Web's development with careful consideration for the novel legal, commercial, and social issues raised by this technology.
W3C concentrates its efforts on three principle tasks:
(c) Vision: W3C promotes and develops its vision of the future of the World Wide Web.
(d) Design: W3C designs Web technologies to realize this vision, taking into account existing technologies as well as those of the future. The fundamental design principles of the Web as an application built on top of the Internet are: Interoperability, Evolution and Decentralization.
(e) Standardization: W3C contributes to efforts to standardize Web technologies by producing specifications (called "Recommendations") that describe the building blocks of the Web. W3C makes these Recommendations (and other technical reports) freely available to all.
W3C Activities are generally organized into groups: Working Groups (for technical developments), Interest Groups (for more general work), and Coordination Groups (for communication among related groups).
There are five Domains: Architecture, Document Formats, Interaction, Technology and Society, and the Web Accessibility Initiative. Each Domain is responsible for investigating and leading development in several Activity Areas which are critical to the Web's global evolution and interoperability.
(f) Architecture: Enhancing the infrastructure of the Web and increasing its automation. Includes:
Document Object Model (DOM); Jigsaw server; Uniform Resource Identifier (URI); Extensible Markup Language (XML); XML Protocol.
(g) Document Formats: Improving the technology that allows Web users to effectively perceive and express information. Includes: Amaya browser; Graphics; including Portable Network Graphics (PNG), Web Computer Graphics Metafile (WebCGM), and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG);
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML); Internationalization (I18N); Maths, including Mathematical Markup Language (MathML); Style Sheets, including Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and eXtensible Style Sheet Language (XSL).
(h) Interaction: Exploring new ways to access Web information. Includes: Device Independence;
Synchronized Multimedia, including Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL);
Voice Browser.
(i) Technology and Society: Understanding the social impact of the Web and reaching out to affected communities. Includes: Privacy, including Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P);
Semantic Web; XML Encryption; XML Signature.
(j) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Improving accessibility to web resources for those with disabilities. This work is split into a WAI International Program Office (IPO) and a WAI Technical Activity.
In addition to the five Domains, the Quality Assurance (QA) Activity has been launched with a Working Group and Interest Group whose primary mission is to improve the quality of W3C specification implementation in the field.
5.2.2 United Nations Centre for Trade and Electronic Business;
UN/CEFACT
URL: http://www.unece.org/cefact
UN/UNCEFACT is a consortium consisting of Member States, governmental and industrial organizations recognized the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. Within the United Nations, UN/CEFACT is located in the Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE), which is part of the United Nations network of regional commissions. The activities of UN/CEFACT are related to the worldwide facilitation of international transactions, through the simplification and harmonization of procedures and information flows.
The technical structure of UN/CEFACT is based on permanent and ad-hoc working groups. Some of the permanent working groups which are of potential interest to the OntoWeb SIG on content standards are:
(a) Business Analysis Working Group (BAWG). The purpose of the Business Analysis Working Group (BAWG) is to analyze current business processes , to identify constraints that adversely impact on the mission and objectives of CEFACT, and to propose appropriate changes to those business processes.
(b) UN/EDIFACT Working Group (EWG). This Working group develops the UN/EDIFACT standard.
It is divided into sub-groups according to vertical industry sectors. For example there are subgroups for finance, transport, healthcare, etc.
(c) Techniques and Methodologies Working Group (TMWG)
Currently, there are three ad-hoc working groups, two of which are of potential interest for the OntoWeb SIG on Content Standards. These are:
4. Electronic Commerce Ad-hoc Working Group (EC AWG)
5. eBusiness Transition Ad-Hoc Working Group (eBTWG). The purpose of this group is to serve as a bridge from the recently completed ebXML initiative to a future permanent working group on eBusiness. The mission of the eBTWG is to identify specific work items to facilitate the completion of the activities related to the ebXML Business Process and Core Components Projects and to oversee the further development of those items. In addition, this group would be responsible for developing and maintaining the UN/CEFACT eBusiness architecture to ensure consistency with the ebXML architecture specification.
5.3 Other organisations
5.3.1 National Institute of Standards and Technology- NIST
URL: http://www.nist.gov
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a non-regulatory federal agency within the U.S. Commerce Department's Technology Administration. NIST's mission is to develop and promote measurement, standards, and technology to enhance productivity, facilitate trade, and improve the quality of life. NIST carries out its mission through four interwoven programs:
• NIST Laboratories that provide technical leadership for the technology infrastructure needed by U.S. industry to continually improve its products and services;
• A quality program that recognizes quality achievement by U.S. manufacturers, service companies, educational organizations, and health care providers;
• the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a nationwide network of local centers offering technical and business assistance to smaller manufacturers; and
• the Advanced Technology Program, accelerating the development of innovative technologies for broad national benefit through R&D partnerships with the private sector.
NIST is not a formal standards body, rather it participates in the technical work of such bodies and industrial consortium providing to them its technical expertise.
Of particular interest to the OntoWeb SIG on Content Standards is the Manufacturing Engineering Lab and especially its Manufacturing Systems Integration Division (MSID) of which a short account is presented below.